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Escort mission over vietnam with a 4 ship formation having to protect another flight of 8. We did escort them, but we engaged 5 fresco's who came toward us. Non of my sparrow missiles got a kill (2 locked but did not hit the target, the two other were ''cold'' launch). At he moment i made a hard turn to the right to engage with my sidewinders, warning lights came on all of a sudden and aircraft reacted not so well. Quick look with the external view to see what was going on and taadaa, the whole vertical stab was gone!

Only one thing is in my mind at his moment, bailing out and finish to the Hilton Hanoy but wait... i'm still flying this thing! I had the hardest time to keep it in the air long enough to try to bail over neutral or allied territory and having a chance to keep going in the campaign (it was my second mission only). I manged to do that about 10 minutes and i look to the minimap and saw an allied shore base within range. I started to pull back the throttle to see how the aircraft was going to react, pu the gear down (3 wheels were still there) and i though : Can I land?

Slowly and came toward the runway and........ landed!!!!!!

I though to myself : Well done! About time after 20 minutes of sweating :) I took a screenshot of my damaged bird to keep a ''souvenir'', then on the report screen i've been declared KIA :) hahahahha

Maybe i did not survived and died at the hospital after all :)

I'm sure you all got this king of stories in mind...

This beat the day i landed short on the aircraft carrier because i did not check my fuel gauges and ran short of fuel when it was not the time :)

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Always remember the miracle cure: your ejection seat! If you get shot up so bad that the game considers your plane "destroyed" and you land, but don't eject, you're considered dead. BUT! If you land, and then add even more unneeded stress to your body by yanking your ejection handles, suddenly, you are jarred back to life, and the game only considers you seriously injured. I think on a campaign, both are game-enders, but at least you're alive.

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I will eject after landing next time (if i can make it there)... Thinking about it, i should have pull the ejection handle over us territory (that was my first idea :) But i did not know that the game consider we are dead if we loose this part of the plane...

To answer Do335, the Phantom was doing the devil dance, Rolling non-stop but still flyable, even more at low speed, gear down and speed brake out (don't ask me why...) I did lost my tail fin on an A-1 and i did went in a spin and i though that was going to happen... but no?!?

Anyway, i learned something from this : If in trouble, pull the handle!